


The Benefits of Bond-Mating

by IndraraSkye



Series: Dragon Stiles [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Domesticity, Dragon Stiles Stilinski, I really wouldn't recognize fluff if it jumped up and bit me so I'm gonna go ahead and call it fluff, M/M, Maybe fluff, Peter's a lawyer, Sheriff's name is John, insert appropriate tag here, later Alpha Peter Hale, more of a chance to give the boys nice things, not really very plot driven, probably fluff, sex didn't get explicit sorry, talk of arranged marriages, yep still bad at tagging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 01:01:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndraraSkye/pseuds/IndraraSkye
Summary: Peter and Stiles deal with the fallout from their accidental mating, and Peter comes to terms with the fact that dragons are still very much around. The boys learn to live with each other.





	The Benefits of Bond-Mating

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd. Blah blah blah. Second verse, same as the first!

Stiles’s phone rang again. It was the fifth phone call in a goddamn row, and he was going to crush the thing under foot and not look back if it didn’t stop soon. Stiles was still in the bathroom, using up every drop of hot water in the sheriff’s house.

Their day had started entirely too early, yet again, thanks to “pack business.” This pack’s version of “business” was ludicrous, and he was going to crush Scott McCall under foot at the same time as his mate’s ringing phone. He was an early riser, but gathering at 5:30 am because the “True Alpha” had a “bad feeling” was almost enough to let his sanity go—again—and take his frustrations out on the general populace of Beacon Hills. He hated this town. He hated this town so very, very much. He was still working on convincing Stiles to get the hell out of here, but it had only been a week and not much progress was being made yet.

Instead, he was staying in Sheriff John Stilinski’s house with the sheriff’s son, who was now Peter’s mate, and trying his best to make sure that nobody ever found out that he’d mated himself to Stiles Stilinski. 

His nephew would never let him live it down. His niece would outright cackle at him. His daughter might try to offer sex advice. He should never have come back.

The chorus to Rob Zombie’s “Dragula” screamed from the tinny phone speaker. Again. He let out a noise of disgust and dropped the tome on dragon basics he was reading onto the desk. This couldn’t go on. 

“Stiles I swear by the sanctity of our mating that if you don’t make this blasted thing stop, I will answer it myself!” 

He may have put a little more snarl in than he’d actually been feeling, but he enjoyed a bit of theatrics every now and again. So did Stiles. If he had to put up with the…dragon’s melodrama, Stiles could damn well deal with some snarling over something that was actually aggravating.

_I dare you to answer it, Zombiewolf. Go ahead. They’ll find out sooner or later._

He’d almost completely forgotten about the shared telepathy. Stiles was very good at shutting it down now that he’d gotten a handle on the situation and the bond-mating was mutual and complete. He was not at all surprised that it took outside intervention for him to get the hang of it. 

Stiles was a horrible teacher.

He took his mate’s dare, because life was all about adventure and it was a pretty good opportunity to take his displeasure out on Stiles’s True Alpha. “For the love of hell, Scott, entire _quadrants_ of Beacon Hills had better be on fire. Do you know how many times I’ve had to listen to the chorus of “Dragula”?”

He enjoyed the full two-second silence before the McCall version of the Spanish Inquisition began. “Who is this? Why do you have Stiles’s phone? Is Stiles okay? I swear, if you have hurt Stiles in any way, I will hunt you down and end you. What do you want? Put Stiles on the phone.”

He sighed and rubbed between his eyebrows. Scott McCall was an alpha. He was a terrible alpha, but he was an alpha. Stiles was actively in his pack. Even non-werewolves in a pack got to enjoy pack bonds. He should know right away that Stiles was downright happy at the moment and slightly amused, for some reason. Nothing he’d read suggested that dragons had enhanced hearing. Stiles himself had never acted or indicated that he had enhanced hearing. Absolutely nothing remotely sexual was occurring in that shower at the moment—and wasn’t THAT an awkward discovery when they’d realized that even with the telepathy shut off, they could still feel the other masturbating—so Peter had no idea why Stiles was slightly amused, but there it was. McCall should have picked up the basics, as well. Those questions made “asinine” look like a compliment.

“I can’t put him on the phone, Scott. He’s in the shower. What do you need? I can pass a message along to him, if you’d like.”

**Your best friend is an absolute moron.**

“Is this Derek?! Derek, are you in town? Dude! When did you get in? Why aren’t you at the loft?”

_Scott is fine. He’s just young. He’ll figure it out._

**Exactly why does Scott not find it surprising that Derek would answer your phone while you are in the shower, Stiles?**

“No, Scott. This isn’t Derek. There IS another Hale in town, though. In case you’ve forgotten.”

_Because Derek is a creepy menace who likes to lurk? He’s related to you, remember? Is he in town, though? It’d be awesome to see him!_

Peter made a mental note to call his nephew and tell him to get his ass to Beacon Hills, then silently cursed the sudden need in him to please his goddamn child of a mate. It hadn’t been that terrible over the last week, Stiles’s needs being surprisingly few given his age and temperament. They hadn’t even consummated their mating yet. Stiles, even though he smelled like teenage boy hormones all the time, had told Peter that first night they spent together that his sex drive hadn’t really kicked in yet, and he honestly didn’t like much past “wanking it in the shower,” if he was being honest. Peter wasn’t even sure if he could have sex since the fire—erections around others not being something he’d even tried since the coma—so that suited him just fine. The boy demanded an inordinate amount of cuddles when nobody was looking, though. Peter ran hot. He liked heat. He often slept with a couple of blankets and a comforter in the summer. Those nightly cuddles were going to induce heat stroke, which he’d just recover from and then go through all over again given his enhanced healing abilities. Stiles still occasionally shivered against him in bed. 

“PETER? Why are you answering Stiles’s phone? If you hurt him, Peter, I swear to god—”

This was intolerable. “Why would I hurt Stiles, Scott? Have I EVER actually hurt him? Think back. I’ll wait…The answer to that question is a resounding no. Threatening is a far cry from actually hurting him, I will have you know. Now, do you have a message for him, or shall I end this inane conversation now?”

_Seriously, dude, is Derek in town? We have to see him if he is, oh my god! Last time I saw him he looked all SQUISHY. Derek. SQUISHY._

“Just tell him I can’t make the gaming marathon tonight, Peter.” Scott ended the call. Peter threw Stiles’s phone on the kid’s too-small bed. That was one obstacle down.

He grabbed his own phone and texted his nephew, suggesting the beta come to Beacon Hills soon to see everyone and save him a trip to Florida. Second issue taken care of.

**I am not telling you anything until you’re out of the shower and we can talk using WORDS, Stiles. I know your father doesn’t have unlimited hot water.**

His father had the worst water heater in all of creation. The water went cold on him after about fifteen minutes. He had no idea how Stiles managed sixty-minute showers. It was disturbing, honestly. His hair was starting to suffer for the lack of water pressure, too. 

Phantom fingers wrapped around his cock. He narrowed his eyes and stared daggers toward the bedroom door. The sensation of long, deft fingers stroked up and down, and his dick responded to the feeling even as he willed it to behave. Jolts of what felt like white-hot lightning shot up his lower abdomen. He growled and allowed one of his favorite mental images, the one of Stiles on the ground with his throat ripped out and Peter licking blood off his claws, to send over their little mental connection. He could feel that little shit’s smirk from two rooms over. 

Those ridiculous phantom fingers uncurled from his cock and he could hear the shower turn off.

“Call me John, Peter” Stilinski popped his head through the door to Stiles’s bedroom and asked Peter if he’d eaten yet. This place was an absolute madhouse. 

Before he’d even realized what was happening, he was downstairs helping John toast grilled cheese sandwiches in their tiny little kitchen, on their old stove with the electric coil burners. It wasn’t the gourmet kitchen he’d become accustomed to, but it also wasn’t the single-coil burner on the laminate table that had served as Derek’s kitchen, so he just sighed and went with it. Again.

John, it turned out, was also a mate. He was entirely human, and he’d somehow survived the death of his mate. Peter thought it was slightly bizarre that everyone in the know in this situation kept insistently separating “bond-mate” and “mate” and refused to simplify things down to just “mate,” which seemed infinitely more efficient. This probably meant he was missing a key piece of information in this matter, and he hated missing information. He could ask his new father-in-law why the distinction keeps being so clearly made, but he suspected that would be both uncomfortable and slightly embarrassing for him, and he tried to stay away from those two things whenever he could.

Stiles came down, hair still damp and mussed but otherwise dressed, at least, and stole the three grilled cheeses he’d made and the two that John had managed to burn together. His mate was a heathen. He’d mated with a heathen. Somewhere, Talia was laughing at him.

“Ho’y cwaaap, ‘ou c’n COOK,” Stiles proclaimed through a mouthful of toasted bread and HIS melted cheese, spraying bread crumbs against the front of the refrigerator. It was disgusting. This was going to be a long couple millennia.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” 

He didn’t know if he should be sarcastically overjoyed or righteously indignant that he and John made the same statement at the same time. He decided to go with vindicated that he wasn’t the only civilized person in this house, and then opted not to raise an innuendo eyebrow at Stiles to spare the man grilling cheese with him. He toasted another sandwich.

“Derek is not in town, by the way. Scott can’t make the gaming marathon tonight. You’re eating MY cheese right now, and one of them is that blue cheese that I know you can’t stand.”

Beside him, John snorted. Who knew that the sheriff of Beacon Hills would turn out to be an ally? He flipped the sandwich in the pan and mused that it made a sort of sense. They were apparently going to be co-parenting for a while. 

Stiles set the sandwiches down on the counter and then wiped his tongue off with the palm of one of his hands, scraping against it. Peter huffed in amusement and set another couple sandwiches going, these two with American cheese food in them. 

Stiles wrapped one of his lanky arms around Peter’s waist and ducked under the arm holding the turner, and Peter came to the sudden realization that after only a week, his life had gone completely…domestic. It was both startling and troubling. Even before the fire, he was not a domestic sort of wolf. Luckily, he’d had a wife who understood this. It had helped immensely that she wasn’t in love with him in any way, shape, or form. Theirs had been a purely political alliance, but she was kind enough and knew her role in his life. She’d accepted his role in his sister’s pack, as well. He’d come to enjoy her company, and she’d given him a son whom he loved and adored and doted on in a way nobody had ever thought him capable of. That still didn’t make him particularly domestic. He’d always enjoyed cooking and kept his space clean and organized. He’d pointed that out once to Talia, but she had laughed at him and announced that hobbies and hygiene did not equate to domesticity. 

Now, here he was, a week in the home of a child he’d spent years wanting to kill and lick, often at the same time, after accidentally mating with him, making grilled cheese sandwiches and exasperated faces with said child-mate’s father with his arms around a creature of absolute myth and _legend_ who kept trying to steal his food and didn’t know how to chew with his mouth closed. He could hear Talia scream-laughing in his head. The scene he now found himself in was so domestic that he might as well be wearing a collar and chewing on a squeaky toy. He sighed.

“Puff the Magic Dragon” done entirely in pan flute interrupted them. Stiles grimaced and pulled his phone out. John drew his eyebrows together and turned off his burner so he could stare expectantly at Stiles. Worry and anxiety pulled at the mate bond. The voice on the other end of the incoming call wasn’t quiet. Peter listened in. Stiles didn’t stop him.

“D? What’s up?”

The voice on the other end was male, not as low-pitched as Stiles’s voice but smoother overall. It sounded concerned, as well. “_Stiles, man, mom is PISSED. Jericho actually suggested she, and I quote, fuck off! I think this is it, dude. I think we’re really gonna war this time._”

Peter raised an eyebrow at his mate. Stiles rubbed a finger and a thumb against the corners of his forehead and leaned back against him. “Does your mom know you’re calling me about this? I’m grounded, you know. Ten years of minding my own business.”

That had been his punishment for bond-mating outside his species. Hime, whom Peter had since come to find out was only HALF as scary as she’d seemed, had called it a slap on the wrist, but it was a decade of being ostracized from the greater life of his own kind. Peter had been offended on Stiles’s behalf, and Stiles had snorted, kissed him on the cheek, thanked him for defending him, and then insisted this was the equivalent of Stiles’s dad grounding him to the house for a weekend if he’d gotten liquored up, drove his Jeep into the center of someone’s house, and killed three people. THEN the brat had the nerve to suggest that Peter should take a few moments and readjust his concept of time and then demand cuddles on the couch.

Peter turned his own burner off and moved the sandwiches to a plate so he could wrap his arms entirely around his mate. He was still kind of offended on Stiles’s behalf, and something was bugging the hell out of the boy, anxiety clogging the bond almost completely.

“_Of course she knows I’m calling you, man. You are my bestest friend to ever best friend. I don’t give two dicks about what the council has to say. If we’re warring, I want my best friend by my side. You’re a second son to her. She will get the exceptions she needs if you want to fly with us, Stiles. Give me the word. I’ll tell her._”

He didn’t know who D was, or who his mom was, but this was definitely not Scott McCall on the phone. Stiles radiated a completely different loyalty and love at the moment, his face flashing through several expressions before he schooled it back into something neutral. “Are you sure it’s gonna be war? Nobody’s warred for 400 years, Damien. Jericho is a complete and utter pain in the ass, but there’s no way your mom would just war with him no matter what he says to her.”

“_Jericho knows you haven’t consummated the bond-mating. He’s trying to call mom out on it and get the bonding invalidated, dude. She’d pointed out that both you and your wolf were already marked and attached. He said the claim wasn’t official, and he’d be damned if he’d let the slight to his clan go unchallenged. He is as pissed as mom is._”

They had to be talking about their mating. A string of invectives hurled from Stiles’s lips that was impressive even for HIS foul mouth. He agreed with every one of those sentiments. He may not be in love with Stiles (yet), but he’d become quite attached to his boy over the last seven days, and there was no mistaking the fact that Stiles WAS his boy. He was not going to just allow some person to invalidate his claim. Werewolves didn’t work that way. Stiles was his, and he’d happily kill to keep it that way. He’d killed for far less in the past. He’d daydreamed about killing the boy in question once because Stiles had taken the last apple in the basket of fruit Derek had kept in his loft back then. The only reason he hadn’t acted on his fantasy was that he was trying to get the ragtag bunch of miscreants to trust him. He laid a chaste kiss to the side of his boy’s head.

Stiles smiled up at him.

“Tell Mom that if it comes to war, she should get the exceptions needed. I’ll always fight beside you. Always, being grounded to the house be damned.”

Peter let a little growl rumble through his chest. Stiles’s smile turned into a smirk. “I have a feeling that my bond-mate would also like to get in on the action, so we’ll both be there, D.”

“_You’d better consummate that shit then, Stiles. A beta wolf won’t do us much good._”

That was…interesting. He was a beta—well, technically he was an omega with all his strength and faculties still about him—and he wasn’t sure what sex would change about that. If he consummated the mating, it was true that he and Stiles would be actual pack, as opposed to Stiles “being” in the McCall Pack right now, which would add to his strength, but he’d still be a beta. His wolf preened at the thought of Stiles expecting him to fight by his side. He wondered if Stiles would bring a bat to a dragon fight.

Stiles said his goodbyes and ended the call. John amped his stare game, and Stiles’s shoulders slumped. Peter could feel the defeat, heavy and weighing the bond down like cement wrapped in tar, as Stiles curled up into his embrace.

Stiles nuzzled into Peter’s shoulder, and he brought a hand up to card through his boy’s hair. Stiles was upset and defeated and needed the comfort right now far more than Peter needed any answers.

He could feel Stiles in his head, a warm tingle that felt like it was nuzzling against his brain. He found himself rather liking the idea of Stiles scent marking his brain. 

“It looks like there’s to be war,” Stiles announced, the words slightly muffled against the fabric of Peter’s shirt. 

John’s stare turned into a scowl. “Jericho?”

Stiles nodded without lifting his head. Peter kissed the side of his head and kept carding the boy’s hair, tightening his hold on his mate and rocking side to side a little bit. The motion had always worked with his younger cousins and then later with his nieces and nephews. It seemed to be working now with his mate. Stiles moved with him, tense muscles slowly becoming more pliant. He waited until the head on his shoulder lolled a bit to its side, then he escorted Stiles to one of the kitchen chairs. John sat down across from them, the scowl still etched on his face. He reached out and rested a hand on his son’s arm.

“You’re bond-mated now, kid. He’s got to accept that. The council censured you, approved the finalization of the mating ritual. Everything is above-board!”

Peter had no idea what was going on, but his mate was still unhappy. He moved closer to Stiles and nuzzled behind the boy’s ear. Stiles shook his head at his dad.

“He’s fighting the bond status because it hasn’t been physically consummated, even though he knows how young I am.”

John withdrew his hand and shook his head, anger vibrating off him in waves of acrid stench. “Fucking asshole” was all he said.

Stiles snorted a general agreement.

Nobody had said anything that might clue him in on who Jericho was, but if the big problem was that they hadn’t had sex yet, there was an easy fix to that. “So we’ll consummate the bond.”

It was apparently John’s turn to snort, but Stiles grabbed his hand and smiled softly at him. “It’s not that easy, Pete. He’s already asserted his challenge, and I was to be mated to him when I came of age, so he has legally valid ground to challenge from.”

Stiles was nineteen. That was “of age” in any state or country. He stated as much. Stiles flinched.

“I’m not, though. Sure, here among the human world I am, but really I’m still a nestling, little older than a human kindergartner. I’m only 124 years old, barely old enough to make my own decisions. It’ll be another couple hundred years before I can legally sign any paperwork like alliances or treaties, which is what a marriage arrangement with him comes down to.”

Peter must have given more emotion away through the bond or in his face than he’d meant to, because Stiles was quick to continue. “I’m old enough to enter into the bond-mating with you, though. I’m old enough for everything to be on the up-and-up there. We are legally bond-mated, unless Jericho wins the challenge.”

He could feel emotions matching him ringing back through the bond. Stiles didn’t want that to happen, either. He could feel his boy’s fondness and desire for this match, could feel affection for him and the possibility of love in their future. He could also feel Stiles’s willingness to do whatever it took to make sure their bond wasn’t broken. He wanted to remain Peter’s mate as much as Peter wanted to remain his. 

“What do we have to do to ensure that doesn’t happen?”

John sighed and stood back up, pacing the length of the table before he spoke. “I’ll dig through my stuff and find the old files, see if some of them could apply here. I’m pretty sure Hime had a lot of them digitized and put on that external hard drive a few years ago, when everything went to shit. I’ll see if I can find both copies. I know the clan refuses to acknowledge your existence, but every clan I know hates Jericho and his people more than they like to distance themselves from disgrace. I’ll see if Eisaku can reach out to your mother’s people and plant seeds there.”

With that, John left the room, already grabbing at his phone and muttering about “goddamn politics, nobody needs this shit, fuck the lot of them.” 

Stiles felt much calmer, a small ray of happiness shining down their bond. Peter decided it was time to ask his questions. He started with the most obvious. “Who’s Damien?”

Stiles huffed a bitter laugh and stood up, keeping his grip on Peter’s hand and pulling him upstairs, declaring, “You are going to cuddle the fuck out of me while we do this.”

He proceeded to arrange them both on the bed and cuddle the fuck out of Stiles. It wasn’t exactly a hardship.

“Damien is my best friend, closer than Scott. My mom and Hime were friends, so it was natural that we were nested together. We learned and trained together for 100 years. We’re as close as our moms were, really. He was the first one I told when I figured out I liked males as well as females, and he’d figured it out fifteen years earlier, so he just laughed at how intelligent I apparently wasn’t.” Stiles smiled at the memory, then went on. “When Mom passed a few years ago, Hime stepped up as surrogate mother, since I’d been calling her ‘mom’ as long as I’d called my mother that. When she’d gotten sick the first time around, she worried about my future even though my dad and Hime both told her not to. She’d been cast out of her clan when she mated with Dad, so arranging for my future was going to be difficult. She’d contracted an arranged mating between me and Jericho to protect me, even though she couldn’t stand the piss-ant. Hime stepped in after her death and tried to invalidate the arrangement with everything she could find—nobody likes Jericho, because he’s sleazy and slimy and power hungry.” Stiles stopped talking and smirked at Peter. “I didn’t like you when I first met you because you reminded me of my future husband, and now here we are.”

“Here we are,” Peter agreed. “I would like to point out that I haven’t actually changed that much. I’ve gained some semblance of sanity, but I still enjoy the things I enjoyed before.”

Stiles hummed and brushed his fingers gently against Peter’s side. “Turns out you’re not really sleazy or slimy, though. You’re a complete and utter asshole, and you’re totally still insane, but only slimy when you want to push someone away. Jericho is a pedophile who wants nothing more than to upset the balance of power and bring the old clans down…Shit, I just now realized just how much you reminded me of Jericho back then.”

Peter slapped the back of his head. He did it gently, but he still did it. The idiot had it coming. Stiles glared at him.

“Continue.”

Stiles shrugged and wriggled in until Peter had absolutely no free space anywhere. Peter just huffed against his forehead and wrapped his arms more tightly against his mate.

“I don’t know what you want me to continue with. Damien’s my best friend, Hime is like a mom to me, Jericho is like a dick and a half, and he’s all pissed because I chose to bond-mate myself to someone else, and that was the only thing that could effectively break the contract. Hime considers me part of her clan, always has, so she’s willing to go to war over my choice.”

Peter remembered the dozen older dragons presiding over how Stiles should be punished and to what extent. This species had an independent legal system. The arrangement was a binding contract. If there was one thing Peter could navigate, it was the law. 

“Explain the difference between mating and bond-mating, Stiles.”

A flush rose up Stiles’s neck and blotched across his cheeks. “Dragons can enter into three different types of legal romantic situations: marriage, mating, and bond-mating. Marriage looks in every way like human marriage does. It lasts as long as the shorter-lived being or until both parties wish to put an end to it. There is no transfer of any kind, both parties keep what they entered the arrangement with as far as material possessions goes, and if the species are not naturally compatible, there are no children. Mating is more permanent. It will lengthen the life of the shorter-lived species to allow the arrangement to last until the longer-lived partner passes away. Material possessions become combined, with the exception of hoards, of course, and inheritance is an option in that case. Gender compatible mates can procreate, regardless of species. The shorter-lived species of the pair will begin to age normally should anything happen to the longer-lived mate. Bond-mating is permanent and grants strength and power transference. All possessions belong equally to both parties. It will lengthen lives and will become the only mating a bond-mated pair will ever consider having within five years of creation. Both mates will age according to the progression of the longer-lived of the pair even if something happens to one of them. Procreation can occur regardless of species or gender compatibility. Mating will trump marriage. Bond-mating will trump mating. That’s why our bond-mate nullified the arranged mating contract with Jericho.”

Hm. “Your dad and your mom mated. That’s why he’s starting to look older.”

Stiles nodded.

“We bond-mated.”

Stiles smiled when he nodded this time.

He didn’t feel any different. He didn’t feel any younger. He didn’t suddenly need children in his life. He certainly didn’t feel more powerful. Still, he enjoyed this thing he had begun building with Stiles. The boy was bright and intelligent and could actually make him laugh, and one thing he had always felt was a deep affinity for law and order. “Do you have a book of law somewhere? Something that will spell out the laws of your kind in clear and certain terms?”

Stiles hummed again, his eyes rolling off to one side as he thought about it. “Yeah. I think I’ve got a full set in the vault. Why?”

Stiles had a vault. That was intriguing. He wondered what kind of goodies were in that vault. He pushed that aside for further thought after this ridiculous challenge had been put down and this interloper put back into the hole he should never have crawled out of. 

“Does your father have a copy of the actual mating contract your mother entered into with this Jericho?”

Stiles scrunched his face up. Peter watched his nose twitch and valiantly tried not to laugh.

“Of course he does. He’s my dad.”

Peter disentangled himself from his boy and sat up. “Excellent. I’ll need access to both.” He pulled his phone from his shirt pocket and scrolled till he found Hime’s contact page, shooting off a quick text. 

_Did you know that I was a lawyer in a past life? I’d gotten very good at it until someone had tried to burn me alive. Give me two weeks to study the contract and the law books Stiles said he had. Let’s see if we can take this interloper down with words instead of physical aggression._

Stiles wrapped his arms around Peter’s shoulders from behind and asked what his Zombiewolf was up to, and he smiled back at his mate. 

“Did Derek ever talk about who I was before the fire, Stiles?”

Stiles shook his head. “Not really—at least, not that I can remember. I’m big enough to admit that I tuned out whenever the subject of you came up in a non-lethal way.”

Peter chuckled. “I was a lawyer. I was fairly good at my job—I was the ADA defense attorneys always grumbled under their breath about getting paired against, and the US Attorney’s office had started courting me for a move to their office. I wasn’t going to take it, because I liked working at the local level down in San Francisco, but then I came home for that ridiculous annual pack meeting and Kate Argent took that decision out of my hands.”

He could feel Stiles shrug behind him. “Okay, congratulations on being the lawyer everyone loved to hate. Why are you so gleeful about this now? Our laws are different from your laws, dude.”

His phone buzzed in reply.

**Consummate the bond, Peter Hale. I will get you the two weeks you have asked for.**

He swung Stiles around so the kid was straddling his lap. “Yes, but you have everything I need to get myself up to speed on your laws, and this is something that I have excelled at from day one. I’ve got this one, Stiles. Give me access to those books and that contract and then sit back and let me take care of you.”

He could almost taste the disdain dripping off his mate. 

“I can take care of myself.”

He smiled. “I have absolutely no doubt of that, dear heart, but I am a wolf. The need to protect and provide for my mate is actually built into my genetic makeup. Let my wolf be happy, Stiles. It likes you.”

He watched Stiles’s face as his boy contemplated these words. He saw the moment a chink appeared in those walls, so he pressed a bit further. “You know, I’ve watched the way you are with your kind and those connected with your kind. You provide, too, and I’m willing to bet you’ve been trying to figure out how you can take care of me without upsetting me. Letting me take care of you IS a way of taking care of me, because it is an actual need both I and my wolf have. You’d be meeting NEEDS, Stiles. Mate.”

He tried not visibly gloat as he watched that particular wall crumble to dust. He’d always been good at his job.

“Fine, Pete. We’ll handle things your way first, but if you do anything to harm my books, bond-mates or not, I will end you. They are…very important to me.”

He snorted. Stiles didn’t have a bit of interest in law. He didn’t care about it unless he was trying to circumvent it. He wasn’t even certain WHY Stiles had a full set of book on dragon law in his vault. He could feel how serious Stiles was in his threat, though. He looked around the room, taking in the stacks and piles of books on all manner of subjects, the overstuffed bookshelves. Stiles had mentioned hoards in passing, and he knew from lore that dragons kept hoards. He scoffed. Of course Stiles would hoard books. His mate loved knowledge as much as he did. 

“I would never do anything to purposefully jeopardize your hoard, Stiles,” he promised. He physically crossed his heart the way school children did after making their version of serious promises.

Stiles nuzzled their noses together. “You’d better not. Hurting my power would hurt your power, you know.”

“I am constantly amazed at just how physical you are without the drive for sex behind those actions,” he mused. “Wolves are tactile, but we puppy pile to scent and mark through light touches. You seem to enjoy the cuddle more than the touch, and you don’t seem to care if skin is touching or not for the cuddle.”

Stiles nuzzled his cheek against Peter’s. “You’re my bond-mate. Touching you strengthens our bond and comforts me. More than that, whenever you hold me in your arms or I hold you in mine, it reinforces that possessive drive, the idea that we belong to each other.” Stiles lays his head against Peter’s shoulder. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but dragons are very possessive.”

He smiled. They were going to end up more than a match for one another. “I’m afraid we need to have the sex talk again, Stiles. Two different dragons have brought up the need to consummate our mating bond.”

Stiles sniffed and then lifted his head to look at Peter. “Our bond-mating, Pete. Our bond-mating. And I know. We should. Hell, we should probably consummate today. It’s just that…it wasn’t exactly fun before. It was a lot of work for the same payoff I get using my hand.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it changes once the sex drive kicks in?”

He seriously doubted that. “When is it supposed to kick in?”

“Two or three hundred years from now.”

He doubted they’d be able to wait that long. “Well, you ever played with another male?”

Stiles’s eyes narrowed. “Played with?”

He huffed. “Yes, Stiles, played with. Sex doesn’t have to be work. You can relax and enjoy things as you go, too. People talk about it as “playing around” for a reason. It can be fun, but you need to let go of the idea of working for a payoff. It can be very fun.” He leered at his mate.

Stiles arched an eyebrow. “I thought you said you didn’t like sex.”

And there went the leer. The tips of his ears went red and it took everything in him to not smack the back of Stiles’s head. “I never said that. I do like sex. I have always liked sex. I like sex with women. I like sex with men. I enjoy fucking. I enjoy getting fucked. I enjoy lips and mouths and hands. I still masturbate regularly. What I SAID was that I have had difficulty getting and holding an erection around other people since the fire. That is a very different issue than not liking sex, and I don’t have to stick my dick in other people to play.” 

Stiles’s nose wrinkled. “Show me.”

He leaned forward and captured Stiles’s lips in a gentle kiss before whispering, “I can do that.”

He did that. It turned out that whatever was going on with his dick, it didn’t hold true with biological mates. He kept things light and gentle, touches soft and kisses lingering, until he’d opened Stiles up successfully and Stiles was moaning underneath him that he needed more. He gave his mate more.

Afterward, as he was cleaning his mate with his tongue, Stiles had agreed that playing with other men was, indeed, very fun. 

He woke up at about one that morning in pain that made both the times he’d been burned alive seem like scraped knees. His bones shifted and crunched and crumbled, like his shift magnified to astronomical proportions. It felt like his skin was tearing apart, micro fissures and small ruptures jagging and ripping across him. His fangs dropped. His teeth lengthened. All he could smell and taste was coppery blood and the bitter tang of misery. His vision altered from white to black to gray before disappearing completely into velvet black nothingness. His claws sprang out. His muscles and tissues tore from his skeleton. He couldn’t think, his mind filled with the white buzzing of a million screams let loose at the same time. The bedsheets rasped and scraped. He seized and spasmed until he could remember to breathe again, the buzzing in his brain quieting. The first thing he heard was his mate soothing him, voice calm and tone comforting as he crooned several versions of “it’ll be alright; you’ll be alright.”

When he could open his eyes again, he looked over to find Stiles looking down at him with gentle, emerald green eyes. One of Stiles’s hands was carding through his hair. His whole body was jittery, like he’d had two liters of caffeine and then got electrocuted repeatedly with tasers and car batteries. 

“Equalize it, Pete. Channel the power, babe. You’ve got this. Please don’t go crazy on me and start ripping people apart again, okay? You’ve got this.”

That’s when he felt it. He’d forgotten what it had felt like, high voltage and rabbit quick and searing through his veins. He’d forgotten how much it sang to him, all its whispers and promises of power and prominence and authority. It ran red and white through his nerve endings, bled into his eyes and settled between his joints. 

Alpha power.

He reached within and grabbed at their bond, holding it tight as the alpha power tried to take him. It was beautiful and strong. It promised that with it, nobody he loved would ever be hurt again. He remembered what a lie that was the first time around. 

Stiles threw himself on top of him and cuddled down, nuzzling his cheek against Peter’s. Peter reached around and held him, grounding himself in the physical touch. His nerve endings ignited in white-hot fire. His blood burned molten magma in his veins. His frontal lobe tingled. It was so much more than before, visceral and frightening in its vehemence. 

“Equalize, mate,” Stiles whispered against his skin.

He shoved back at the power, forcing against it as it tried to burn him away. He gritted his teeth and pushed at it, using stubbornness and sheer force of will to squeeze it to where it belonged, using his breathing and every ounce of self-control he’d gained in the years since the fire to manipulate it into a pattern he could maintain and call on at will.

When it was done, he looked up into his mate’s bright green eyes and pushed some of that power through their bond. He recited the mating vows of his family, his people, telling his boy all about how he was Stiles’s and he trusted the boy with his life and his heart, cutting a small gash across three of his fingertips and placing them against his mate’s heart, controlling the healing easily and allowing his blood to flow into Stiles’s heart as it had always been done. A second bond dropped into place, running parallel to the first one and so close they almost touched. The pack bond. 

He was an alpha.

~~~

He wasn’t as far along with his research on dragon lore and dragon law as he’d like to be after two weeks had passed, but Stiles had apparently discovered his sex drive that first afternoon and had been very demanding since, so it wasn’t completely his fault. Also, Stiles had demanded whole evenings in order to take him flying, which was a quite literal description. After the first time Peter had re-enacted the movie scene with Harry riding Buckbeak, Stiles had delighted in the “secret depths” of Peter’s nerd-dom and had demanded more cuddle time spent during the intake of geek media, usually followed by fairly vigorous sex. 

Consummation was no longer an issue in their bonding. John was making noises about the two of them finding a place together that was not his house.

Peter had come up with some sub-clauses and prior rulings, as well as specific line items and examples from the arranged mating contract itself to use against Jericho. Hime had sent him what she’d managed to gather, as well. He’d prepared and practiced his arguments, and Hime had gotten them time in front of the council four days after his two-week deadline had passed. He was as prepared as he would ever be.

Then someone in another clan entirely killed Jericho, apparently, and because Stiles was grounded, Peter didn’t get to find out why. He strongly suspected that Hime had finally broken down and ordered a covert hit, but there was no way he could prove it. On the upside, nobody was left to challenge the bond-mating. On the downside, he did not get to argue in front of the council. He’d actually really been looking forward to it.

He turned to his mate as they laid out on the hammock in the backyard in the hazy heat of a midsummer California day.

“How would you feel about transferring to UCSF in the fall?”

Stiles didn’t even open his eyes. “It’s done already, Zombiewolf. Try to keep up.”

He smiled and snuggled into his mate, his dragon. At least he’d never be bored.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry there was no explicit smut here! Dragon Me Down was so pure and innocent, I felt like this one should be, too. Also, I was going to actually write Peter taking an entire clan of dragons to court, because he totally would, but then I realized that he would also totally wipe the floor with them in said courtroom and I know just a little less than zero about actually lawyering in a court of lawyerdom, which means I could not convincingly provide him with the words needed to metaphorically kill the guy trying to steal his mate from him, so I just had Hime kill the bad guy and be done with it. I feel like it all worked out in the end.


End file.
